Capture selected text from active window

Question

Hi all,

Need on your help on this.

I need to capture the selected text from the current window (be it a browser or any other application), and print it in my c# console application (for now - to keep is simple).

I got some help from the following thread:
http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/Forums/ShowMessages.aspx?ThreadID=46461

But, it gives me an ArgumentOutOfRange exception in the last line (substring operation)

Other ideas / approaches for implementing this are also welcome.

Thanks in advance,

Jd

Vic Rodniansky · Answer

Hi. This code gets and sets the text from url bar of IE for example.. I must get the highlited text from other parts of a browser as well, or any other application. Could you please help me with this issue? Thanks a lot. Vic.

Roei Bar · Answer

here is the code you asked for: sing System ; using System . Text ; using System . Runtime . InteropServices ; public class Example { [ DllImport ( "user32.dll" )] static extern int GetFocus (); [ DllImport ( "user32.dll" )] static extern bool AttachThreadInput ( uint idAttach , uint idAttachTo , bool fAttach ); [ DllImport ( "kernel32.dll" )] static extern uint GetCurrentThreadId (); [ DllImport ( "user32.dll" )] static extern uint GetWindowThreadProcessId ( int hWnd , int ProcessId ); [ DllImport ( "user32.dll" ) ] static extern int GetForegroundWindow (); [ DllImport ( "user32.dll" , CharSet = CharSet . Auto , SetLastError = false )] static extern int SendMessage ( int hWnd , int Msg , int wParam , StringBuilder lParam ); const int WM_SETTEXT = 12 ; const int WM_GETTEXT = 13 ; public static void Main () { //Wait 5 seconds to give us a chance to give focus to some edit window, //notepad for example System . Threading . Thread . Sleep ( 5000 ); StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder ( 500 ); int foregroundWindowHandle = GetForegroundWindow (); uint remoteThreadId = GetWindowThreadProcessId ( foregroundWindowHandle , 0 ); uint currentThreadId = GetCurrentThreadId (); //AttachTrheadInput is needed so we can get the handle of a focused window in another app AttachThreadInput ( remoteThreadId , currentThreadId , true ); //Get the handle of a focused window int focused = GetFocus (); //Now detach since we got the focused handle AttachThreadInput ( remoteThreadId , currentThreadId , false ); //Get the text from the active window into the stringbuilder SendMessage ( focused , WM_GETTEXT , builder . Capacity , builder ); Console . WriteLine ( "Text in active window was " + builder ); builder . Append ( " Extra text" ); //Change the text in the active window SendMessage ( focused , WM_SETTEXT , 0 , builder ); Console . ReadKey (); } }

Capture selected text from active window

Answers (2)